THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA

An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 239, September 22, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
Home Page   Main Menu   Recent Articles   Site Map   Website Index   Issues & Controversies
  Cyberland University   Political Science, Philosophy, & History: Lectures   U.S. Constitution
  American Constitutional Law   American Constitutional System   American Political System
  Conservatism, Liberalism, & Radicalism   How America Goes to War
  World War IV: Islamist Terror War Against the U.S.A. & the West

WHO ARE YOU CALLING STUPID?
By Alan Caruba

AMERICA'S ENERGY NEEDS & U.S. ENERGY POLICY -- MAJOR THEMES IN THE ANALYSIS OF THOMAS FRIEDMAN & OTHER ENVIRONMENTALISTS WRITING IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA:  DISLIKE FOR HUMANITY; GREAT CONCERN REGARDING POPULATION GROWTH & THE USE OF VARIOUS SOURCES OF ENERGY; DISDAIN FOR OIL, NATURAL GAS, COAL, & NUCLEAR POWER; ADHERENCE TO GLOBAL WARMING THEORY; & ADVOCACY OF GOVERNMENT MANDATES & SUBSIDIES FOR SUCH LOW-ENERGY PRODUCERS AS BIOFUELS & WIND & SOLAR POWER -- DISSEMINATING ENVIRONMENTALIST PROPAGANDA & INSULTING THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE AVERAGE AMERICAN
FULL STORY:   If you read as much of the blather turned out by media folk like the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman and others, you begin to see certain themes emerge.

They don’t like humanity much.

One of their great concerns is population growth and, in concert with the use of various sources of energy, all the problems that come from too many people competing for food, water, and that parking space you want.

Their disdain for oil, the primary energy source of transportation, plus the source from which plastic is derived, along with a thousand other uses, infuses everything they write. They don’t like natural gas or coal either. These misnamed “fossil fuels” transformed and improved life for everyone over the last century and earlier. The Earth is not running out of any of them.

Lastly, they are desperately clinging to the “global warming” lie, despite the fact that most people have concluded it was and is a hoax. Most people are right. The Earth is already into a decade-old cooling cycle.

Thomas Friedman, whom we are constantly reminded won a Pulitzer Prize, thus crowning him among the smartest people on Earth, has a new book out. It is about the Earth, and the book's title is Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America. As regards the Earth being "hot, flat, and crowded," Friedman is wrong on at least two of his assertions.

The Earth is crowded. There are more than six billion people. In time, there will be less. That is a fundamental law of demography, why populations grow and decline

The great problem that wordsmiths like Friedman encounter is that they fall in love with their own words, particularly if they lead to great fame and great wealth. After a while, they begin to believe their fanciful notions of how the world works and where it’s headed. Given enough time and rope, and they are frequently found to be astonishingly wrong. In the meantime, however, you can be pretty sure he thinks you’re stupid.

The September 14, 2008, Sunday edition of The New York Times was a study in what might be called journalistic cognitive dissonance; on the front page, the lead story was “Storm Damage is Extensive and Millions Lose Power.” It requires no genius to figure out that, without electrical power, everything grinds to a stop. More than half of the electrical power in the United States is generated by burning coal. It’s cheap. It’s abundant.

On the September 14 editorial page, Friedman, was explaining why we have to stop using oil as an energy source for transportation and replace coal and nuclear with wind turbines and solar panels to produce electricity. Friedman is convinced that perfectly good ways of producing power are stupid, are doomed, and should be replaced as soon as possible.

The title of Friedman’s column was “Making America Stupid,” and it is a pretty good description of the entire environmentalist movement, whose main objective often seems to be the thwarting of any new energy, i.e., power, sources in America. Visit any “Green” website and you will find they are spending millions to stop the building of coal-fired plants, filled with dark fears about nuclear power, and advocate nonsense.

It helps, if you are a New York Times editor, to be unable to make the connection between your page one story and the babbling of Thomas Friedman, who is inside the same issue calling for “innovating a whole new industry of clean power” for America after the grudging admission that “Of course, we’re going to need oil for many years.” You think????

Friedman’s column lambastes the bad old Republicans for wanting to “focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — “fossil fuels” — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy.”

That fabulous renewable energy, wind and solar power and biofuels, would surely have been embraced by now, if it could deliver the power efficiently and reliably. It cannot. The wind does not blow all the time and the sun does not shine all the time.

In Texas, there are lots of wind turbines, but they, like those in the rest in the American nation, provide barely one percent of our electricity needs. And they exist only because they are heavily subsidized with federal and state funding. Without government mandates, they would not exist. The same goes for solar power. And ethanol.

This is what happens when government intrudes itself into areas that should be left to intelligent people. During the Carter administration, the Department of Energy was established in 1977 for the purpose — we were told — of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Thirty-one years later, the budget for DOE is $24.2 billion a year. It has 16,000 employees and some 100,000 contract employees. Are we energy independent yet? This is the same Jimmy Carter who had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. They’re gone now.

Friedman pauses in his criticism of Senator John McCain and the Republican solutions to our energy needs (“Drill, baby, drill!”) to make fun of their proposal for more nuclear plants, but Freidman wants to carpet America with solar panels and ruin the landscape will thousands of wind turbines. No thank you!

Gregg Easterbrook wrote a review of Friedman’s new book for Slate.com. He pointed out a lack of footnotes or source notes. Instead of citing any documentation, Friedman would have you simply accept his opinions as fact.

Easterbrook also took note of something that Friedman has in common with Al Gore; a very large home. Like Gore, he is constantly in flight somewhere around the world on commercial and private jets. While Friedman urges everyone to “lead as environmentally sustainable a life as you can,“ Easterbook notes that he “is lord of a manor and racing through more resources in his daily life than 10,000 rural Africans.”

There’s a reason why we don’t have more coal-fired and nuclear plants generating the electricity we need.

There’s a reason our electric power grid is not being upgraded to meet our future needs.

There’s a reason oil companies won’t spend billions to build new refineries.

There’s a reason food costs more when corn is converted into fuel instead of food.

The reason is more than thirty years of government regulations and general interference with the power and energy industries that must answer to their investors, while coping with “environmental” laws that slow or render impossible the provision of our energy needs.

A real energy policy is based on access to our nation’s vast deposits of affordable coal and the ability of the oil and gas industry to extract the vast reserves of oil and natural gas that exist.

Friedman thinks it’s stupid to drill for oil and natural gas, and mine our coal. He thinks it’s smart to throw money at windmills and solar panels. He thinks you’re stupid enough to agree with him.


LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources

The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy

Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity



Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly commentary, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center, which is located at www.anxietycenter.com.

Caruba has a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

Caruba’s most recent book, Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy, has been published by Merril Press. Books previously authored by Caruba include A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam, The United Nations Versus the United States: The UN's Plan to Control Planet Earth, and America: A Nation Without Borders -- A Pocket Guide to Immigration Issues.


© Alan Caruba 2008


Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com




Return to Top of Page

Go to the WEBSITE INDEX

Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Public Issues & Political Controversies


Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
Most Recent Articles


Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Volume X, 2008


Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Subject Matter Highlights


Return to POLITICAL EDUCATION Homepage

CONTACT & ACCESS INFORMATION




LINKS TO PARTICULAR ISSUES & SUBJECT MATTER CATEGORIES
TREATED IN THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, U.S.A.:

Africa: Black Africa * Africa: North Africa * American Government 1
American Government 2 * American Government 3 * American Government 4
American Government 5 * American Politics * Anglosphere * Arabs
Arms Control & WMD * Aztlan Separatists * Big Government
Black Africa * Bureaucracy * Canada * China * Civil Liberties * Communism
Congress, U.S. * Conservative Groups * Conservative vs. Liberal
Constitutional Law * Counterterrorism * Criminal Justice * Disloyalty * Economy
Education * Elections, U.S. * Eminent Domain * Energy & Environment
English-Speaking World * Ethnicity & Race * Europe * Europe: Jews
Family Values * Far East * Fiscal Policy, U.S. * Foreign Aid, U.S. * Foreign Policy, U.S.
France * Hispanic Separatism * Hispanic Treason * Human Health * Immigration
Infrastructure, U.S. * Intelligence, U.S. * Iran * Iraq * Islamic North Africa
Islamic Threat * Islamism * Israeli vs. Arabs * Jews & Anti-Semitism
Jihad & Jihadism * Jihad Manifesto I * Jihad Manifesto II * Judges, U.S. Federal
Judicial Appointments * Judiciary, American * Latin America * Latino Separatism
Latino Treason * Lebanon * Leftists/Liberals * Legal Issues
Local Government, U.S. * Marriage & Family * Media Political Bias
Middle East: Arabs * Middle East: Iran * Middle East: Iraq * Middle East: Israel
Middle East: Lebanon * Middle East: Syria * Middle East: Tunisia
Middle East: Turkey * Militant Islam * Military Defense * Military Justice
Military Weaponry * Modern Welfare State * Morality & Decency
National Identity * National Security * Natural Resources * News Media Bias
North Africa * Patriot Act, USA * Patriotism * Political Culture * Political Ideologies
Political Parties * Political Philosophy * Politics, American * Presidency, U.S.
Private Property * Property Rights * Public Assistance * Radical Islam
Religion & America * Rogue States & WMD * Russia * Science & Ethics
Sedition & Treason * Senate, U.S. * Social Welfare Policy * South Africa
State Government, U.S. * Subsaharan Africa * Subversion * Syria * Terrorism 1
Terrorism 2 * Treason & Sedition * Tunisia * Turkey * Ukraine
UnAmerican Activity * UN & Its Agencies * USA Patriot Act * U.S. Foreign Aid
U.S. Infrastructure * U.S. Intelligence * U.S. Senate * War & Peace
Welfare Policy * WMD & Arms Control


This is not a commercial website. The sole purpose of the website is to share with interested persons information regarding civics, civic and social education, political science, government, politics, law, constitutional law and history, public policy, and political philosophy and history, as well as current and recent political developments, public issues, and political controversies.



POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS

POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE

Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.

Government, Politics, Public Policy, Legal Issues, Constitutional Law, Government & the Economy, Cultural Values, Foreign Affairs, International Relations, Military Defense & National Security, Geopolitics, Terrorism & Homeland Security, American National Interests, Political Systems & Processes, Political Institutions, Political Ideologies, & Political Philosophy

INDEX FOR THE ENTIRE WEBSITE

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z




THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA

An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis

Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor

Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic, Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues


Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity